Primary menu

Control osteoarthritis pain

This article is about physical control osteoarthritis pain. Because it is a complex, subjective phenomenon, defining pain has been a challenge.

Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Pain motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the future. Sometimes pain arises in the absence of any detectable stimulus, damage or disease. Pain is the most common reason for physician consultation in most developed countries.

Some nociceptors respond to more than one of these modalities and are consequently designated polymodal. Nociceptive pain may also be divided into «visceral», «deep somatic» and «superficial somatic» pain. It may be accompanied by nausea and vomiting and may be described as sickening, deep, squeezing, and dull. It is a type of neuropathic pain. It is often described as shooting, crushing, burning or cramping. If the pain is continuous for a long period, parts of the intact body may become sensitized, so that touching them evokes pain in the phantom limb. Vigorous vibration or electrical stimulation of the stump, or current from electrodes surgically implanted onto the spinal cord, all produce relief in some patients.